Baaastin – The Meltdown

Ah, what a weird day to be up in Boston. It was so surreal. The talk about deferring, people getting scared and trying to figure out what to do, if it was worth even trying, what’s the best option now that we are here… I felt truly lucky not having signed up, having to even consider all those factors and have to go through it. Any other day, for sure, I would have been kicking myself, why oh why did I NOT sign up?? I do that every time I go watch a race. But no, not this time. I was there as course support and was quite glad with my role.

Sunday came around, got on an early megabus to Baastin full of runners, got to chat with a few of them… it was a cool place to be in, it seemed like a running-party-bus!! As soon as I landed, I got an amazing lunch at one of my favorite spots in the US, and one of the few reasons I would leave NYC for Boston for a day, walked up the finish line and Copley as I was in the area… and got a tan…

… an enormous map of the marathon in the middle of Copley Square. It’s always been too crowded I guess, as I had never seen this before… this time, everyone was in an airconditioned room somewhere else!

Anyway, food, sleep, alarm, people get ready for the race, I pass out again, the maid wants to clean up the room and I don’t even hear her knocking and wakes me up and then goes away scared that she woke me up, I get up, prep for my supporting role, and head out.

I scout a spot, right where I told everybody I’d be. I had a few bottles to hand out for fueling so I felt very very responsible, mostly on a day like today. Who am I kidding, I was stressed out like crazy that I was gonna miss people and I’d feel like crap!!! Anyway, I stake out the best spot, set everything up, bottles, gels, camera, whistle, phone with alerts, two flags so they could spot me, and then, five seconds later, I feel my skin sizzle. Gosh, this has to be sucking so bad for them…

I sunproof up, even with my little hawaiian tan… Even all lotioned up, I felt my skin burn. This is not bad, this is really bad. I am sweating and I am not even moving.

My phone starts shooting up 5K and 10K splits and I start getting really scared. This can not end well. No way. I am scared. Like really scared.

We see lots of army guys with their gear go by. Why, why? Meb goes by too.

Smart guy got a car for this marathon!

Then I look at my watch, the women should have been here 10 minutes ago. Of course. Soon I hear the helicopters, the cars, and they’re here.

Neither of them looked good. I had never seen women racing like this. Some of them were pouring sweat. Some were completely dry; so scary.

I look down, men are very late too.

I shouted a lot, mostly for Gebre, he’s one of my favorites! He looked so awful. Mutai looked like crap to. It’s not what I am used to seeing. It was like looking at a car crash. I felt horrible being there. It was a tough day and I still can’t believe so many people were there. It was so bad, that even in between times when no runners were coming, we would all rush to the shade. As crazy as I usually am about racing in all conditions, this was scary to watch. Can’t even imagine what it must have felt like. Kudos to everyone who braved this out.